I thought that I had a good weekend. Stayed in, declined invitations to go out, and indulged my creativity. Drew a lot. Wrote a little. Drank coffee and pondered. When I finished my drawing on Sunday evening, I felt recharged and ready for the week ahead. The idea for the drawing had came to me on Saturday morning and I’d spent most of the weekend working on it, after doing a few warm up drawings and even a pre-sketch of it to ensure I could do the darned thing (I tend to overthink almost everything, except when I don’t think at all and jump in with a laugh. I gotta do the latter more).

Anyways, the weekend. I ate well, slept … some… (insomnia is ever-threatening), thankfully didn’t watch my favourite football team lose an important game, purposely chose to take rest days from the gym and went to bed with a sense of hopefulness, gratitude and positivity.

Then, I woke up this morning to a sense of dread. The second my eyes opened, an awful feeling crawled across my lower abdomen and a cold, soulless grey descended across the back of my brain. Everything is bad. There was no hopefulness or positivity. Nothing had changed between midnight and 7am, but there was this goddamned feeling visiting me again. I haven’t had it for a while, but last fall, winter and spring, it hung over me almost constantly. When this feeling hit, I stopped creating, I stopped working out, I stopped doing almost everything. I hated it and I hated living with this feeling.

Hello darkness you unwelcome fucker…

I laid in bed for a few minutes, feeling lost and angry that this feeling had came back. I’d thought that by returning to my fitness routine, refocusing on establishing my company, and heck, even drawing every day for the last month, I was setting myself on the right path again. Then this. It felt like the path led over a cliff and a forest fire was behind me.

I gave myself a minute, then got up and tried to shower the feeling away. Made my coffee and had breakfast. Dropped and did a bunch of pushups to get my blood pumping and reset my body. Then, threw myself into creating for clients.

Now, sitting here with my second cup of coffee and rough ideas for a client’s new project in my head, I don’t feel as bad as this morning, but still not great. I can’t entirely chase this feeling away, yet. I know that I will, and one day, I’ll hunt the thing down and kill it for good.

I know a lot of people go through times like these, and if you do, please know you’re not alone. Ask for help if you need it. Let’s all get through to better times.